There are a number of airports in New Caledonia. However, not all New Caledonia airports have regularly scheduled flights. We do not list the smallest New Caledonia airports, since there is no way to provide you flights from those airports. AirGorilla offers flights, hotels, and rental car reservations for New Caledonia.
New Caledonia, the foreshortened form of Territory of New Caledonia and Dependencies (French: Nouvelle-Caledonie or Territoire des Nouvelle-Caledonie et Dependances; popular names: Kanaky, Le caillou), is a "sui generis collectivity" (in practice an overseas territory) of France, made up of a main island (Grande Terre) and several smaller islands. It is located in the region of Melanesia in the southwest Pacific. At about half the size of Taiwan, it has a land area of 18,575.5 square kilometres (7,172 sq mi). The population at the 2004 census was 230,789 inhabitants. The capital and largest city of the territory is Noumea. The currency is the CFP franc.
Since 1986 the United Nations Committee on Decolonization has included New Caledonia on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories. New Caledonia will decide whether to remain within the French Republic or become an independent state in a referendum sometime after 2014. Its capital Noumea is the seat of the regional organization the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (formerly the South Pacific Commission).
The name Caledonia derives from the Latin name of an area corresponding to modern Scotland. The name Kanaky is also in common usage in French, English and the indigenous languages. This name is favored by Melanesian nationalists. The word comes from kanaka, a Polynesian word meaning human used by Polynesians to call themselves.
New Caledonian soils contain a considerable wealth of industrially-significant elements and minerals, including about one-quarter of the world's nickel resources. Mining is therefore a significant industry that greatly benefits the national economy. However, the country is also home to numerous, critically-important ancient ecosystems. Thus, widely-practiced and indiscriminate open-pit mining across much of New Caledonia, has been (and continues to be) responsible for severe deterioration of the nation's irreplaceable natural heritage.
The climate of the islands is tropical, and rainfall is highly seasonal, brought by trade winds that usually come from the east. Rainfall averages about 1,500 millimetres (59 in) yearly on the Loyalty Islands, 2,000 millimetres (79 in) at low elevations on eastern the Grande Terre, and 2,000-4,000 millimetres (79–157.5 in) at high elevations on the Grande Terre. The western side of the Grande Terre lies in the rain shadow of the central mountains, and rainfall averages 1,200 millimetres (47 in) per year.
New Caledonia is considered one of the world's most botanically-important, and critically endangered hotspots. Unlike many of the Pacific Islands which are of relatively recent volcanic origin, New Caledonia is an ancient fragment of the Gondwana super-continent. The country still shelters an extraordinary diversity of unique, endemic, and extremely primitive plants and animals of Gondwanan origin. ()
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